Lawrence Shack, a longtime salesman for GE Healthcare and a fixture in the nuclear medicine industry, died May 18, according to a notice from his family.

Shack had heart problems, his wife Sue said. He was 68.

Born to a Jewish family in Great Britain, Shack immigrated to the United States in his teens, and went on to become one of the country's top nuclear medicine salesmen. He sold nuclear medical equipment for GE Medical Systems from 1981 until he retired in 2008, Don Bogutski, a friend, said.

In most years, Shack was GE's number one nuclear medicine salesman in the country, and almost never less than number three, his friends said.

"To do that once in your career is a great thing, but to do that over and over and over again is almost impossible," Bogutski said.



Shack's success was credited to his great personal charm, his understanding of the industry and his persistence. If customers had a problem and considered switching vendors, he would bring their demands to GE and get something worked out.

"He was the consummate salesman," said Bill Dorn, a salesman at GE, who considers Shack a mentor, and knew him since 1986. "Regardless of what Larry had to sell, he would be at the top of the list".

Persistence also paid off when he was briefly one of the only people on GE's nuclear medicine sales force. In the early 1990s, going through a rough patch and looking to trim the budget, GE decided to slash its nuclear medicine sales division and combine whatever employees remained with the rest of the medical sales staff. The company approached Shack with an offer to move to the new team and to sell the company's whole line, but he refused.

"He said, 'Absolutely not. I sell nuclear medicine, and I'm your number one guy. You're going to keep me selling [it],'" Bogutski recalls.

Shack was then kept on as GE's only nuclear medicine salesman in the East Coast from 1994 to 1996, when the company decided to relaunch the nuclear medicine sales group, his friends said.

For years, Shack was also a member of GE's field advisory board, where he was a sought-out authority on the market, and where the company would get his opinion on new products or marketing strategies. "Everyone wanted to wait to get Larry's point of view," Dorn said. "He had this brain -- he could dissect anything and everything, to find the good things and bad things."

In 1999, Shack considered moving to Florida, then a weak territory for GE. The company helped re-locate him, and even bought his house from him -- something GE would usually only do for top executives -- to make the move easier, Dorn said. Once there, Shack helped revive sales.

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